Unremembered (Unremembered #1)
Jessica Brody
AWOKEN
The water is cold and ruthless, lapping against my cheek. Slapping me awake. Filling my mouth with the taste of salty solitude.
I cough violently and open my eyes, taking in the world around me. Seeing it for the first time. It’s not a world I recognize. I gaze upon miles and miles of dark blue ocean. Peppered with large floating objects. Metal. Like the one I’m lying on.
And then there are the bodies.
I count twenty in my vicinity. Two within reach. Although I don’t dare try.
Their lifeless faces are frozen in terror. Their eyes are empty. Staring into nothing.
I press a palm to my throbbing temple. My head feels like it’s made out of stone. Everything is drab and heavy and seen through a filthy lens. I close my eyes tight.
The voices come an hour later. After night has fallen. I hear them cutting through the darkness. It takes them forever to reach me. A light breaks through the dense fog and blinds me. No one speaks as they pull me from the water. No one has to. It’s clear from the looks on their faces they did not expect to find me.
They did not expect to find anyone.
Alive, that is.
I’m wrapped in a thick blue blanket and laid on a hard wooden surface. That’s when the questions start. Questions that make my brain hurt.
‘What is your name?’
I wish I knew.
‘Do you know where you are?’
I glance upward and find nothing but a sea of unhelpful stars.
‘Do you remember boarding the plane?’
My brain twists in agony, causing my forehead to throb again.
Plane. Plane. What is a plane?
And then comes the question that awakens something deep within me. That ignites a tiny, faraway spark somewhere in the back corners of my mind.
‘Do you know what year it is?’
I blink, feeling a small glimmer of hope surge from the pit of my stomach.
‘1609,’ I whisper with unfounded conviction. And then I pass out.
PART 1
THE FALL
1
ANEW
Today is the only day I remember. Waking up in that ocean is all I have. The rest is empty space. Although I don’t know how far back that space goes – how many years it spans. That’s the thing about voids: they can be as short as the blink of an eye, or they can be infinite. Consuming your entire existence in a flash of meaningless white. Leaving you with nothing.
No memories.
No names.
No faces.
Every second that ticks by is new. Every feeling that pulses through me is foreign. Every thought in my brain is like nothing I’ve ever thought before. And all I can hope for is one moment that mirrors an absent one. One fleeting glimpse of familiarity.
Something that makes me . . . me.
Otherwise, I could be anyone.
Forgetting who you are is so much more complicated than simply forgetting your name. It’s also forgetting your dreams. Your aspirations. What makes you happy. What you pray you’ll never have to live without. It’s meeting yourself for the first time, and not being sure of your first impression.
After the rescue boat docked, I was brought here. To this room. Men and women in white coats flutter in and out. They stick sharp things in my arm. They study charts and scratch their heads. They poke and prod and watch me for a reaction. They want something to be wrong with me. But I assure them that I’m fine. That I feel no pain.
The fog around me has finally lifted. Objects are crisp and detailed. My head no longer feels as though it weighs a hundred pounds. In fact, I feel strong. Capable. Anxious to get out of this bed. Out of this room with its unfamiliar chemical smells. But they won’t let me. They insist I need more time.
From the confusion I see etched into their faces, I’m pretty sure it’s they who need the time.
They won’t allow me to eat any real food. Instead they deliver nutrients through a tube in my arm. It’s inserted directly into my vein. Inches above a thick white plastic bracelet with the words Jane Doe printed on it in crisp black letters.
I ask them why I need to be here when I’m clearly not injured. I have no visible wounds. No broken bones. I wave my arms and turn my wrists and ankles in wide circles to prove my claim. But they don’t respond. And this infuriates me.
After a few hours, they determine that I’m sixteen years old. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react to this information. I don’t feel sixteen. But then again, how do I know what sixteen feels like? How do I know what any age feels like?
And how can I be sure that they’re right? For all I know, they could have just made up that number. But they assure me that they have qualified tests. Specialists. Experts. And they all say the same thing.
That I’m sixteen.
The tests can’t tell me my name though. They can’t tell me where I’m from. Where I live. Who my family is. Or even my favourite colour.
And no matter how many ‘experts’ they shuttle in and out of this room, no one can seem to explain why I’m the only survivor of the kind of plane crash no one survives.
They talk about something called a passenger manifest. I’ve deduced that it’s a kind of master list. A register of everyone who boarded the plane.
I’ve also deduced that I’m not on it.